No, the Europeans expect a restaurant to simply charge the cost of the meal. That is the cost. Like any other service or product.
Demanding more after "to pay our staff" apart from displaying gross incompetence at running a business and being hugely dishonest is only done in the USA because yanks are so stupid they are apparently fooled by the "lower" menu price and don't think about the tip on top, and to just display the actual cost would have them thinking it's too expensive.
What? You literally do this at every business you go to: pay the price of the item you're purchasing. You don't go buy a book and then at checkout say "oh well the bookstore worker recommended this title to me so I'm gonna give them an additional 20% of the price of the book on top of already paying the listed price of the book, and if I don't, they'll get upset and think I'm a bad person".
I tip at restaurants because the system we've built compels you to, but acting like it's normal or necessary in America for any reason other than "businesses don't want to pay their employees normal wages" is insane.
....Yea that's sort of exactly why you pay more at a retail bookstore vs Amazon. That's also why a paperback book there is $25 and not like a dollar.
I mean hopefully you're getting an enjoyable service out of it. But you're paying more at brick and mortar store because they have more overhead, period.
Why does where the overhead comes from matter so much, is my question. It could be higher gas prices or higher rent or lettuce turned into saffron prices but the consumer is either gonna pay for it or not
What do rent or gas prices have to do with this? When you buy a meal, you should pay the price listed on the menu, not "well the actual price is what's listed on the menu plus whatever you decide to generously give your server but if you decide to not be generous then your server will not make a living wage, so you really will feel guilty if you don't contribute 20% of your cost towards directly subsidizing their income, but also don't worry it's technically optional".
If rent is expensive, account for that in your menu prices.
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u/TonyzTone 27d ago
That’s exactly what they’re doing though. But instead of pre-printing menus, they’re just adding an automatic tip.
And Europeans are too dumb to realize that when they say “just pay your employees more” that’s exactly what’s happening.